If you drive away with it, I won’t have it any more, which is a real hassle.

Please don’t steal my identity or my reputation either. Neither travels well, and all the time you’re using it, you’re degrading something that belongs to me.

But my ideas? Sure, yes, please, by all means, take them.

The scarcity underlying the industrial economy (what’s not yours is mine) has pushed us to make a mistake about ideas. If everyone in town comes to my plant and takes a free sample of what I make, I’ll go bankrupt. But if everyone in the world takes a free sample of one of my ideas (or at least one of my good ones), we’ll all get richer.

I got an email from a reader last week. She was spitting angry at another blogger and wanted me to lower the…